THE MASTER ON HIS ILLNESS

Pandit Sasadhar, seeing the Master ill¹ asked him: " Why do you not concentrate your mind upon the diseased part and thus cure yourself ? '

The Master: How can I fix my mind, which I have dedicated to God, upon this wretched ca£e of flesh and blood?

Sasadhar: Why do you not pray to the Divine Mother for the cure of your illness ?

The Master: When I think of my Mother, the physical body vanishes, and I am entirely out of it. So it is impossible for me to pray for anything concerning the body;

When the Master was badly ill, and could even hardly speak or swallow any food, he exclaimed: " I am now speaking and eating through so many mouths. I am the Soul of all the souls, I have infinite mouths. I am the

1 In his last days he was suffering from the cancer of the throat.

The Master on His Illness

Infinite Spirit covered by a human skin which has a wound somewhere in the throat. When the body is ill, that illness reacts upon the mind. When one is scalded by hot water one says, ' This water has injured me, but in truth what injures is the heat, and not the water. All pain is in the body, all disease is in the body, but the Spirit is above pain and is beyond the reach of disease.

1008. I told the Mother that on account of this (pointing to his diseased throat) I could not swallow anything, and prayed to Her that I might be enabled to eat a little food. But the Mother, pointing to you all, said, "Why? Here you are eating with so many mouths 1 " I was utterly abashed and I could not speak a word more.

The Mother has brought this illness on me in order to teach man how to think of the Spirit and how to live in God-consciousness, even when there is extreme pain in the body. When the body is suffering from excruciating pain and starvation, and when it is beyond all human power to give any relief, even then the Mother shows me that Spirit is the master of the body. My Divine Mother has brought this illness upon this body to convince the sceptics that the Atman is divine, that God-consciousness is truef that when one reaches perfection, freedom from all bondages is attained.

When, during his last illness, the Master was earnestly requested by his disciples to pray to the Lord to cure his illness and retain his body in the world for sometime more, at least for their sake he said: " Well, nothing comes of my speaking to the Lord about it. His will be done. I now see that my Divine Mother and I have become one, once for all. Radha said to Krishna, O beloved, abide Thou within my heart, and appear not any longer in Thy human form.' But She soon yearned to see Krishna in human form. Her heart struggled and panted for the Beloved. But the Lord's will must be done, and Krishna did not appear in human form for a long time.